Sen. Lee: Obama’s ‘Class Warfare’ a Losing Strategy

Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee said President Barack Obama’s Monday night speech to the nation was simply a continuation of his engagement in class warfare over America’s debt crisis and the president’s approach will not solve the nation’s fiscal problems.

“Class warfare — as much fun as it may be for the president — is not going to solve this problem,” said Lee, who authored what is known as the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act in the Senate. “What’s going to solve this problem is when Congress finally imposes upon itself permanent structural, binding spending reform of the sort we need and can only obtain through a Constitutional amendment restricting Congress’ ability to borrow.

“Until Congress restricts its own spending power, through the Constitution, we’re not going to get out of this,” Lee told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “Unemployment has gotten worse, the availability of jobs, the availability of credit, the surplus of homes on the market, the number of people going into foreclosure — all of this has gotten worse” under Obama.

Hannity noted that the Cut, Cap, and Balance legislation, which was passed by the House as a short-term solution to the fiscal malaise, was not even brought to a Senate vote and was given a White House thumbs down. He asked Lee what in turn was the Democrats’ way out of the financial problems.

“No one knows, Sean — it’s for all of us just to imagine what his Imperial Majesty might decide to cram down our throats next,” Lee said. “We had a plan — I mean with all this call for compromise, he refuses to acknowledge that it’s Republicans — tea party Republicans like myself especially — who were behind the one-and-only legislative proposal to do this.

“I wrote the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act and introduced it in the Senate with 40-some co-sponsors and saw it get passed in the House a few days later,” he said. “We were ready to debate it, to discuss it, to subject it to whole amendment processes and everything else that a normal piece of legislation goes through. But then Harry Reid and the Democratic caucus decided to kill it — they tabled it.”

Lee said Obama is not being honest when he says when you raise taxes on those who make more than $250,000 you will help solve the crisis because those “are the very people that we need to rely upon to invest their money” and create jobs.